Plus Ones - Do i need to use names?

People in relationships are named invites. Significant others are not plus ones in any circumstance. If you don’t know their names, contact their partner. The same applies if your friend or relative has a new partner who they consider to be serious at 3 months together. If someone crosses out their partner’s name on the rsvp and adds a stranger, you call them up and say “sorry but the invitation is for you and your partner.” They can choose to attend alone or with the partner or decline entirely.


A stranger who is invited to entertain an unattached single person on your guest list would not have a name listed because you are allowing anyone to attend. It’s not a breach of etiquette to not invite random strangers for unattached singles.

Contact the guests to get their names, and address each invitation by name. The word "guest" assumes plus one, whereas these people are not true plus ones, but part of a couple.

Exactly what Michelle said. You need to be inviting the partners of everyone that identifies as being in a relationship. Doing so by name will prevent substitutions. If a person is truly single, a plus one is optional.

I just asked them what the spelling of their SOs name was. Definitely don't call them guest.

View Quoted Comment Okay, that makes sense, thank you! I didn’t know if it was weird for my FH to text his friends and ask for their partner’s names. Fortunately I know all the partners of my side of the list.


I do agree that there’s a difference between “plus one” and inviting a friend with their partner as a unit, I just wasn’t sure the term for it haha.

New question…


My wedding is in September of this year. If a friend starts dating someone after the Save the Dates are sent, do I need to add their new partner? What about if they start dating someone after the actual invites are sent? Obviously don’t know if this will happen it just occurred to me that it’s a possibility.

View Quoted Comment Yes because they are a significant other at the time when the invite is sent. After the invite is sent, then no because they don’t necessarily consider themselves to be exclusive at that point. Did they start dating before the rsvp due date? In that case, the named guest can choose to attend alone or decline the invite because the partner doesn’t exist as a significant other yet. Cross that bridge when you get there.

View Quoted Comment I feels that’s personal preference on if you want to invite a new partner after the rsvp’s go out. My husband has a friend who he’s known for like 8 years. He was in a long term 6 year relationship when we sent out our rsvps and we obviously named them both. Well they broke up and he started “seeing” an old friend months before the wedding. He asked if he could bring her (our wedding was states away from where we all live so he had to drive). We trusted him and didn’t think he’d bring someone he wasn’t genuinely interested in and now they’re together. She was very sweet and we loved meeting her and having her there.


Now if this happened after we sent out invites we might’ve done differently but tbh we were pretty open with who came and trusted everyone we gave a plus one too. I would get peoples names though for couples. We didn’t get one for this friend and just wrote the invite to “and guest”. But if they started dating someone after the invites go out you wouldn’t be able to invite their new partner except by word of mouth anyway

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Save the dates are sent early, so by the time the invites go out, then the relationship would be months old.

RE: after invitations, yes, if they say there is a relationship, then I would respect it.

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If they start dating after Save The Dates go out, I'd include their significant other (by name) on the formal invitation. We ran into that scenario with one of our groomsmen. He was single when Save The Dates went out, started seeing a girl, and they were fairly serious by the time invitations went out. It wouldn't have sat right with me not to include his girlfriend after he took my husband our for his bachelor party, rented a tux, attended the rehearsal, and agreed to spend most of the day with us on wedding day. Plus, when I think about how serious my husband and I were when we'd been dating for that length of time, I probably would have felt at least a bit snubbed if he were invited to a wedding and I wasn't.

It's a judgement call whether you want to invite a significant other that comes into the picture after invitations go out, but if you have the room (physically and financially), I think it's a gracious thing to include the significant other.

I'm glad this topic is here! If I could get everyone's input on a situation...We have a friend who has been on and off with the same person for the last...2ish years. When we sent our save the dates we addressed it to him only because it went to HIS home and they don't live together. Everyone else is married/lives together so we just sent it to the household. I'm curious how we should address the invite in the event they aren't together at that time?? We are doing the "_ of seats" and will reserve 2 for him, regardless of who his plus 1 is at that time.

View Quoted Comment Oh that’s a situation 😂 I’d say save his envelope for last and try to keep up with his relationship status, if possible.
If you know they are together when you are about to send out the invite, you could include her name but if they AREN'T together at that time maybe just say & guest?
Or just say “& guest” for him and let it be.
Honestly a friend invited me to her wedding last summer and put & guest on mine even though I lived with my BF (now fiancé but we weren’t engaged yet) at that time. She knew we lived together & planned to get married but probably didn’t remember his name haha. I see in this thread it was ‘technically’ against etiquette but it didn’t even occur to me to care LOL

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It is SUCH a situation lol!!